With love, from Jeju

The word 'matcha' gets thrown around a lot. Not always correctly.

For something to be called matcha, it has to earn it. The leaves need to be shaded before harvesting — covered, deliberately, from the sun. This goes back to 15th-century Japan, where tea farmers began noticing that plants growing in naturally shaded spots — under trees, on foggy hillsides — produced something mellower, sweeter, altogether different. So they started replicating it on purpose, draping their fields in bamboo and straw before harvest.

It makes sense, scientifically. Blocking sunlight boosts amino acids like L-theanine, reduces bitterness, and deepens that particular shade of green. It's what gives matcha its smooth, rich character — and why the process matters as much as the plant.

In some places, the land does the shading for you. In Hadong, tea has grown for over 1,200 years on misty mountain slopes where fog and dense canopy do the work naturally. In most tea-growing regions — including Jeju — producers shade their fields artificially, typically for 20 to 28 days. Old instinct, modern method. Letting the land lead, while learning from what works.

TOKKIA sources its matcha from the Kang family farm in Jeju.

Kang is a Jeju native, and his farm is one of the oldest matcha farms on the island — started decades before matcha became the thing it is today. When matcha started having its moment and new farms began appearing across Jeju, he'd already been at it for years, quietly.

As a university student on exchange in Japan, he fell in love with matcha — not just the taste, but the whole world of it. And somewhere along the way, he looked at what he had back home: mineral-rich volcanic soil, a subtropical climate, sea mist rolling in off the ocean. He saw what it could become.

He came back and made it happen, securing farmland nestled just beneath the hills of Halla Mountain, where the canopy provides natural shade and the sea fog does the rest.

The farm still shades its leaves the old way — carefully, deliberately, to coax out that depth of green. During our visit in April, we watched the process firsthand: the leaves being covered, quietly preparing to become matcha.

His passion speaks for itself, really. The matcha is bright green, sweet, with a gentle savoury undertone — the best Korea has to offer, and we mean that without hesitation. It resembles him somehow: humble, natural, unassuming on the surface, but with a complexity that creeps up on you. You can taste the hard work in it. You can taste the care and the love.